@Jane 27 December 2020

When the World is at Negative State, Hold On for Dear Life

**December 27, 2020** Just five more days to go before the end of the year. This year has brought so much chaos, tragedy, and disasters in all places of the world, which ruined millions of life, natural features, properties, careers, economy, and so on. I guess this year of the rat literally rots the world. Even the start of the year wasn't really that lucky. The footprints of the past year still marked the ground and remained visible from tropical cyclones, catastrophic flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, bushfires, and wildfires, pandemic, even refugee/ humanitarian crises, civil unrest and protests, terrorist attacks, political and economic crisis, arises.

Do you still remember when the **bushfires in Australia** started even before the arrival of Spring in June 2019? Thanks to the heavy rainfall in January that finally brought relief to some affected areas. All fires have been contained by March 2020. That 9 months bushfires crisis has burned a million acres, thousands of homes, other buildings were lost, and 34 people died. More than a third of the koala population is thought to have been killed, and other endangered species have also faced the risk of total extinction.

What about the **Amazon wildfires** which burned a significant portion of the Amazon rainforest? That made the seven Amazon countries to sign a pact aimed at protecting the Amazon and promised to increase satellite monitoring of deforestation.

**Super typhoons** landed in different parts of the world that caused **catastrophic floods**. **Hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and Volcanic eruptions** struck the world.

The **Sudan heavy flooding** affects millions of people, and hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes.

The **monsoon massive flooding in different countries across Asia**, leading to dam collapses, rivers overtopping their banks, landslides, mudslides, and millions of people have been displaced from their homes.

My country **Philippines** even experienced **consecutive heavy typhoons** which resulted in heavy floods even recorded casualties in some affected areas. **Aren't those a wake-up call to humans to protect the Earth?** While the mother earth is suffering from calamity and disasters, humans are in a chaotic phase, fighting against each other.

**Humanitarian crisis** increases in different places of the world. Many refugees even died in Customs and Border Protection custody, and some are due to interaction with the border agents. Several problems escalated such as overcrowding, food shortages, lack of hygiene facilities, and health care assistance. The **clashes between the people and the government** in some areas of the world also resulted in more complicated situations.

The **long-run massive protests in Hong Kong** which also known as Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. It continues for many months until COVID-19 stops them from executing more protests. But what happened to the country? A political and economic crisis arises. Many investors abandoned the purchases of land and overall transaction drastically dropped. The economy of HK has become increasingly politicized and the administration received both domestic and international criticism.

What about the **civil unrest in the United States** that leads to months of protests to address racism at all levels of society? The protests aimed to stop the killing of unarmed black people from police custody. The statistics showed that black people are more likely to be killed by the police than white people. Racism should be stopped not only in the US but in all places of the world.

The war does not end yet, because, in this new era, WW3 still exists - mass shooting, bombing, drone and missile attack, ambush, massacre, arson, kidnapping, beheading, etc - **who's being affected?**

**The innocent civilians and the poor, especially young people.**

And here comes the **COVID-19** that recently reached its 1 year of existence. The existence that continuously ruining the lives of millions of people from different places of the world. One in 1,000 people have been affected worldwide and according to statistics as of December 2020, there are 77,998,708 cases, with 1,715,153 deaths and 54,808,870 recoveries. There were sudden changes in people's lives and brought up an economic crisis. Source: https://disasterphilanthropy.org/our-approach/disasters/ **Who's to blame here? If everyone only implemented an early protocol and safety measures, then the cases wouldn't be like that huge.** These are just some of the crises and disasters that happened this year. For so many negative things in this world, some people tend to give up. Should we just give up that easily? **HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE...** **That is what we need to do when life seems to fall apart, and when we desperately need something solid to hold on to when disasters wreaked havoc so we don’t fall apart too. We need to hold on so we can create a dear life.** Everything in this world changes and nothing is permanent. Holding on is the only thing that will help us rise, and will give us the confidence we need to weather any storm. Chaos and disasters are a part of this world, of our life, but we should always remain strong and hold on firmly. **Let go to be the light, then hold on for dear life!** Thanks for reading @Jane. `Lead image from bedfordcoc.com`